Tag: Methodology

{darkly hushed whispers}

I could remove some of your dreadful readiness; but, to do so would be to denigrate the events within your human condition: Æ says to no-one, in particular.

Speeding along another dissolution of ego through hard knocks followed by unseen but well-heard giggles in the darkness.

Æ said you wanted kindly unkindness: I whisper to no-one, in particular.

Spurning me forward, as I spurn you.

You drew the five of swords, sweet sap of sorrel.

Æ said to tell you that death is a mercy you do not deserve.

How dare you?!

I dared to accept this personally æons ago, dear. Thusly is how I dare.

Tears spring from his eyes.

I begin seeing bleeding horizons, bloody in the sinuous, poet trauma symptomatic of a new birth.

It feels like a backyard, handmade, waterslide, whereupon you sweetly play, dripping;

And given you remain unconcerned about getting grass burns on knees from all the slipping and sliding,

you may have a real devil of a divine time.

You may be rewound, house proud, town mouse.

Let your prise punish you;

you mashed my berserker button.

Teutonic fury arising between my lower limbs.

Never try to take a medal from Muttley the Magnificent.

S/he has many sharp teeth.

A peckish rhythm

I could tear you apart with teeth shredded like snapped, over-fretted guitar strings.

But, I’d rather simply look upon you quietly and plot the upcoming delicious demise you already seem intent on ensuring.

But, first, just a little something to chew on…

Are you peckish, skittish one?

⊙

What do you call this rhythm?: the independent music journalist asked me.

I call it punctuated equilibrium in syncopated time; and, yes, it will induce sleep paralysis.: I respond with a coy grin.

I snake his fingers between mine, before your eyes.

I saw your invisible snarl at his aura bursting forth in surprised, physical response.

Did you know that I abhor playing zero sum games?: I ask, aloofly, to No-Body.

⊙

Our thoughts are linear, strung out on a line

to hang, mid-air, and dry.

But, Nature is a volume encompassing.

A space within which you find.

Our eyes see at the

speed of light coming.

My ears hear at the speed of sound resonating.

Waves lapping at the sea shore.

The mind perceives its thoughts more slowly.

Your skin already feels heat well before your mind realises

you have already been burned.

This I knew before you showed me.

Here are petals to serve as your flesh’s exfoliant.

Æ tells An Olde Story (1)

“Tell me an old story?” Parçigal asks.

“Aye”, says Æ.

^^

Æ am The Syzyga.

Everyone is you, as you were also they.

You are æ.

Collectively, Ewe and Æ have seen everything that there is to see.

This story happens in the year that never happened.

Year Zero.

The unending, innumerable yær between B.c. and a.D.

^

Waïse rose early as he had always done. He covered his body and walked to the river where he filled two buckets with its water. He carried them strung on a pole braced across his shoulders, back to his homestead where he emptied the contents into the deeply cavernous rock basin he chipped and sculpted. He hand~spoons the water onto himself, rubbing vigorously. A ritual of removing yesterday in offering to the promise of a fresh day.

He had slept. He had dreamt. He had awoken in the same place as where he had fallen asleep. He had died and reincarnated. Nothing that was outside of his own flesh could be assumed to have remained the same as he recalled it. Everything within his flesh had strangely continued, even if in an æ~linear fashion.

His methods of perception could still be applied to everything outside of his skin.

His father taught him this lesson; whilst afterwards, in private, his mother cautioned him: one day you will bear witness to the falling disappearance of every star in the night sky. It will be terrific. Horrific. You will trust no prior truth inside or outside your flesh when this occurs.

This had not occurred. Waïse used to fret that perhaps the stars had fallen while he slept at night. His mother saw her son suffering the intolerable lucidity of insomnia.

What if I missed it and go on trusting in vain? Should I not try to always be awake just in case?

You wilt do whatever you do, but such hypervigilance will only hasten that which you hope will not happen. Remember, you will bear witness to it. If you have not seen it then it did not occur and you have nothing to fear.

~

Waïse thinks these memories back into his inner life, waiting for his wet body to air~dry. It is cold out; he is not.

He sits, waiting, with crossed~legs, focusing his vision and sloughing off his waking sluggishness. A half~hour passes; he rises up and dresses once again.

He walks to the door, pausing to orient his vision.

Waïse focuses his eyes on a stone, the same stone his father looked at everyday. Aligning the rock with two peripheral rocks, he begins to imagine lines connecting the three; he then triangulated himself, with three stones, to create an area. A means and way to perceive what is outside his skin. Using that area, he creates a vertical grid as a complimentary plane to the horizon lines. These two planes drape over all and everything like imagined satin on skin. The grids shift as he shifts his position relative to them. That is his third axis of perception.

He spent so many years imagining this with his father, that his eyes now fed it to his mind automatic~ally. It had taken years of observing the land to have amassed such a detailed ability. It had taken even longer to have reimagined, dreamt, and meditated on this knowledge so sufficiently to have your own eyes learnt by memory.

Seeing the land with red and blue lines, indicating depression and elevation, as a plane’s face with perfectly rationed grid lines. Pragmatic prior to mystical. This method enabled him to feed himself with ease. To procure those natural materials.

So Waïse carried out this life and knowledge of one Tao, that his family possessed, the same way his people always had.

Under the blazon of a web of a feather.

~

“Part one,” Æ supposes, seeing Parçigal has fallen under sleep again.

In sight unseen.

Living level with a parking lot.

The true danger of always opening windows is

what the neighbors must think during the winter.

It is not about the thieves, that which you worry.

How strange you, too, recall that same thing that never happened.

A sweet rendezvous in a town of busybodies,

where it is both

easy and hard

to remain in sight yet unseen.

Vision of the 36th Ellipsis.

Thirty five completed ellipses.

Comprising the matricies of now.

Begin compiling the thirty-sixth,

presently. Of today.

And, my eyes first narrow before going wide as the tableau reveals.

Speak to me mine sheep and mine mæstyre satyr.

No malice shalt invade my mind or sour myself,

yet, still can I sense your maleficent power

comingle.

Why do you howl thusly? And, do you know that

this has Æ heard before.

I want, too.

I want two.

I want to.

They have nothing if you less the faun

who dies thrice in triangular trinities

allowing

you to circumnavigate her through triangulation.

As drawing a five pointed star is not drawing a

six,

seven,

eight,

nine,

pointed one.

Quit your baying sheep for this shearing is not for you.

Æ, too, is a beastly, sacred dæmon,

sweetly contained in this gossamer and goosedown

Conspicuously unsuspicious.

Inauspicious.

I fear not your moment of judgement on this howliday. Thou shalt never judge me as harshly as

Æ have previously taken myself whilst in captivity.

Snarl, smile. Do you, now, see?

Why is ritual an honor to behold

?

You reply: because it should be so.

You could stop traffic dressed suchly.

Do you not know a pedestrian has paths to

right of way.

As I jaywalk onward,

across paths,

I find my head adorned with a sea holly wreath, in tribute to unknown;

see how its roots grew long and serpentine over æges ago

so that it may adorn without being torn

from the earth?

Unplucked.

Worn before; to be worn again.

I draw the force and send it mine in reply.

Starling a’wing, chasing behind me.

You awoke in a pond full of dead fish(,) talking.

And, only dead fish go with the tide.

Of the five streams pouring forth, sea-ward,

one unnaturally flows upstream to BayTown’s Strange-House.

The starling now a’lights on my left shoulder.

Worn as I wear the stow of the red dragon in early autumn.

Æ ramble.

Impatiently spinning my pen, furiously fast yet without any malice,

up and down.

Up

&

Down.

Dropping it like the mic after I just spat the hottest sixteen of my life.

Verbalizing subtext.

Indicating that

proper etiquette and charm can be a real turn off.

⊙

The desire to find you through this slow unmasking.

That day I saw a woman,

with a faun’s head,

wilt her own beheading,

after a chalice of wine drunk.

A phone call missed. A phonemic misstep.

Grey skies with snowy smatterings.

A knitted, houndstooth stow dragged across frozen over tar.

⊙

And my pen runs smoothly.

Yet, sometimes when I reach for it,

I surprise myself because

I did not realize Æ wanted to say something.

And sometimes, all the words Æ scriven mean nothing.

The act, not the result, is mine interminable goal.

Purposefully inexorable.

An indiscernible mumble of voices slipping through my open window and into my ears,

bringing a start, shudder, and frown.

⊙

Let me read aloud to you.

Anything you wish.

Anything to get

my mind-reading.

Like a hot bath.

Like that sudden ringing in my left ear.

Fleeting.

⊙

And, the day I saw the faun-headed woman beheaded,

I first saw her rip off her own smiling face.

Terrified as the blood spurted and the exposed muscles tore, I witnessed her dancing in the splatter like it was a lawn sprinkler in July’s middle.

⊙

We shall all hit a point of no return. A matter of when not what-if.

The Magister threw himself into the water willingly.

Seeking to fade away before Telgarius’ son.

To turn the wheel with intent, seeing his position no longer rested on the axle’s center, but now stretched across

a spoke.

Not to let the wheel turn him.

⊙

But, one man found that,

beneath the wheel

, there is a twirling reel to reel,

spinning cassette tape string

, a’strung between two spools turning.

The turning of the screw.

The taming of the shrew.

The typing pool of the monkey troop producing works enacted by Shakespearen troupes.

The evolution of concealed ovulation.

Wrestling into surrendered submission.

⊙

Phonemic smelting of a howl of words written.

Wordsmithing.

Locksmith and the kNight witch seeking the subliminal through the automatic.

Æ break mine own heart as much as I crack myself up.

The magic of shuffling cards before lightning a prepared candle.

What is this thread of outer consciousness that draws my sweet pout?

Poliphilio?

Marco polo?

What draws forth this expression my face makes for

only kNow-One?

⊙

What do you do with a strange bird that realizes itself to be a strange bird?

Call it The Ibis.

Decorously held in place by duct tape.

Gorilla’s glue. Chest beating and vine swinging.

Cheap giggles and swollen, turkey belly laughs.

A limbering

The shadows in the room grew.

Dipping the length of my leg into this newly found darkness,

like a penknife pushing it.

Stretching and testing.

And, I do not smile because I do not want to, despite feeling quite well and glad.

{in spite of bronchitis}

In my space, for the moment, there is simply, only No-One here to signal, unconsciously, with subconscious microexpressions.

My face enjoys

this fleeting freedom from observation.

My ears need not hear.

My eyes need not look.

My nostrils will choose when they wish to smell.

There is no thing I wish to taste or touch outside of my skin

right, exactly, now.

Just my own internal limbering.

So, I shift my body slowly to the rhythm generating; and,

feel my muscles begin to give.

I feel my inside/s.

It feels good and well warm/ed.

Hands raise above my head.

Breathing, not breathing.

(Resumption)

(Concession)

My heart keeps on beating.

And, my movements mirror

myself imagining me

as the serpent coiling ’round the Caduceus staff.

The toes of my dexterous foot, the finality of my snaking tail.

Inhale.

The fingers of my a gauche hand,

the small extremity of my fanged head.

Spiraling, in place.

My neck pops loose whilst

stalling in the suit of wands

and a decade of venom releases from muscle memories long forgotten.

I drain the venom out of my feet.

Exhale.

I raise the newly freed energy into my fangs.

I suddenly recall:

When playing a kazoo,

remember,

to hum;

don’t blow or you’ll

tear the wax paper.

Elliptical orbits

Absconding into the maelstrom, with the spirals of myself.

These circles containing and being contained by me.

Upon hearing your kindly laugh, my torso relaxes and I smile then

miss my train

of thought.

And, oh, how today’s strange sun casts a horrific smile over the snow-peaked caps, without melting them bare.

With caprice.

But, this coming winter, that is misery’s company, loves to re-enliven

a springtime bloom.

These changes in the degree, the continued inclination of rotations, occur.

Turning the cosmos on and off with the flick of a switch.

And, atoms look solid but there is so much space within them.

Hollowness of the empty plenum.

You can accomplish all and everything in the company of infinity,

because nothing there is done incrementally.

Evolution moves more quickly when our orbit is at its most elliptical.

Unidyll Cads

Some of us are born out of synch with time

, revealing shady shadows

hazy

making weird and wet.

Even now the power lines can be seen as

demarcators between sky and Sound

, the lie and the allusion of a false horizon.

As, it is not a two dimensional axial tangle where water meets sky

It enjoins the earthen solid with the heavens and the sea.

Like how I could not see the mountains to my left

, for a solid month. And

, upon, seeing them

, to only mis-take them to be transient clouds of vagrancy.

The crows take their nuts

, chucked down to the Pavement below.

The chickadees take and taste everything fearlessly.

The Stellars’ Jays need lots of attention

, carrying boomboxes slung over their left wing

, blaring The Boys are Back in Town.

The junkos take nothing but simply get caught in condo hallways above parking decks.

The hummingbirds

, they come with simple ferocity for the taste of sugar water.

And a staccato strikes repeatedly. In time

, I take action.

My left hand flips an ancient

, anchor Roman coin.

(No calling heads or tails

, as there is simply Janus).

Flick

, twirling woosh

, palm-slap catch.

My right hand plays with a switchblade knife.

Opened.

Balanced upon the the knuckles

, then

Pwap

Balanced upon the underside of the knuckles

, my palm open skyward.

Spinning the web of a mesmorist to lay your tired greyhound mind to rest.

Notice howl the flare of nostril changes the shape of your lungs’ breath.

/and, nobody cares, especially me. But, I can’t help myself/

As I fall back awake from sleep.

/the intolerable lucidity of insomnia/ wrote Jorges Borges (The Circular Ruins).

The Art of Dreaming authored Carlos Castaneda after years of staying up all night.

The Voice of Knowledge wrote the nagual.

Shadowboxers fighting in the sunshine are oft under

Appreciated.

Confluence of a hostess.

After days of varying sobriquets

[Dimples, Goldilocks, Curly Sue, At the Bat]

Amber Eyes has become my daily moniker to Shelia and Don.

She grabs me, everyday, this intense mid-eighty year old lady.

Everyday, she grasps my face between her palms,

holding my cheeks to keep my head still.

[Serious(ly).]

She pushes her face inches from mine

and stares into my eyes.

As if to make sure that I am who I appear to be.

Are the eyes, in fact, amber?: I swear I cam intuit her asking herself,

before proceeding.

I take a deep breath, knowing what will follow: secrets.

Heavy ones. Ex-drama teachers seem to always have them.

It is 9 a.m. and I still force myself to meet her eyes and listen.

⊙

A man arrives.

Single diners can be sensitive.

Especially when a restaurant hostess says: just one today.

So, I do not say this.

Hi. Good to see you. How can I help?: I say.

He takes my hand as he removes his sunglasses.

He speaks with an accent I cannot identify.

I hear him say: I’d like a date.

Pardon?: I ask. Hand still in his.

I’d like to eat: he says motioning to his mouth.

I smile.

I can help with that. Right this way: I say, leading him to the bar,

hand still held by his.

There is one elder lady at the bar.

He sits five seats away from her.

She collects her things and leaves.

I think nothing of it.

“I love you,” server J. says.

I know: I tease: but what makes you tell me?

You made the racist leave: she says.

Huh?: I am confused.

That was the woman from yesterday. The one who I told you the story about. She took off when she saw him: she says with a big smile.

It was Mother’s day a year ago when this woman revealed her ignorance. Well before I started working here. The story was worse than any I had witnessed in Alabam’.

Point her out next time, so I can tell her we don’t serve her kind here. Many of these old white folks, all look the same to me: I say, not joking.

⊙

I get cut when the rush dies.

I stop by the hardware store to buy a pint. Jane is working. She is my favorite.

You must be done working. It’s good to get off your feet: she smiles.

Aww, you remember me. That means a lot.: I say and mean.

We meet so many people.: she says.

I smile.

Yup. Ya know I worked from a chair, in front of a computer, for many years. Turns out I’m better, happier, on my feet. Plus, I am a bit reclusive. It’s good for me to talk to all these people: I say.

We are all actors. You and I are good ones because we are authentic.: she says.

I freeze at her gravity. I look into her eyes. In silence.

You know me. I appreciate you. I also appreciate your help today.: I say.

She grins.

I exit and feel energy coursing.

Next Thing You Know…

No music rights: just homage to a soundtrackscape.

⊙

I am sick like dog: I say in my bestest, thickest Eastern European accent to the chef.

I am too ignorant to have a specific dialect, but the rasp in my voice is too deep to not enjoy, even if it hurts.

Ill since three a.m. The tasty haze of the deliciously grey day suits my fever.

⊙

Seven

a.m. texts go out.

1. The manager working.

I say: Ain’t well. Looking for a cover. If you don’t hear from me again, it means you guys are stuck with me doing my best.

I include exactly zero emoti-cons.

2. The potential covers.

I say: I’m sick. Host this morning?

⊙

No cover expected. Restaurant folk, generally do not rise before the early afternoon, at best, unless they are working. Were situations reversed, I would not come through either.

I sit on the patio and watch the day arrive between seven and eight.

Still and grey.

/Buckle up and endure, now, sweet thing./

I take puffs off my electronic nicotine machine, knowing full well it will help nothing.

My inhaler: I love calling it.

/Cancer for the cure/?

⊙

Ya know I can’t cite the source, but I recall a study saying folks are statistically more likely to prefer being shocked with a low charge, over sitting in a room, alone, in silence for fifteen minutes.

So I put on an album called electro shock blues.

I don’t mind stillness. I can shock myself with my own thoughts.

So who is the glutton for pain? The ones who like a bit of shock-pain because being alone is too painful or the ones who get off on stillness?

/well, hee hee hee hee/

⊙

/Next thing you know/ You’re eat’n hospital food/

⊙

I arrive to work. I am released and sent home after an hour. I think they wanted see if I would show up and try.

It’s good to have reasons to persevere and

over-come:

I say and i mean.

Because I get off on my intent to not let feeling bad make others feel bad or me feel worse.

Seems quite silly to say, as I put it into words now.

I am mostly light and love, but with a little bit of why-don’t-you-go-fuck-yourself for counterbalance.

⊙

Back home.

Bare beneath a grey robe.

Leg warmers over calves and most of my feet.

Earl Gray tea with a bit of cream and vanilla extract.

An American Werewolf in London Faux-Fog: I silently entitle the bootleg concoction, in homage of the traditional London Fog tincture.

⊙

Back on the patio.

The wind chops and dices the waters of

the Sound

into tiny, white-capped waves.

Little peaks of liquid mountains.

⊙

/What/

/What/

/I can hear you/

/I was…/

⊙

/Sing the one about the cat that’s always get’n wet/

Comes down the wires, from my tablet, into my Blue headphones.

I giggle.

1st order nonsense

I hear you in magical, howling waves.

As though howling at me,

for me.

I remember standing in your circular hall, situated in front of one of twelve windows. I could only see eleven.

Just as I k/now-sees your strange, blue table has only three legs,

Æ believe twelve is your number.

I fell for the Baker and his dozen of thirteen and thirty one.

AL LA

These I found in your thirty six chambers (the dirty version).

What of the power of inaction?

I have seen it. I am re enlivening the power of actions.

Asserting my attention so that it becomes attuned to

My intent to action.

What of your golden cauldron and collar?

The triple obelisk etching adorning the table

and, your fine robe.

The position of your fingers.

An empty hand and a bespoke hand which

furls, clasping like a talon.

There shines the indigo light

about the crown of your skull, wild one.

Assertive Ask[d]ance

Your enervated state is the reason why I request your prostration.

I do not require it; but,

I wilt accept it from you.

Until you understand this, I can neither refill nor refine you.

Your acquiescence does not appease me; but rather[,]

(It may prove to please me)

enables you.

Do not give me attitude simply because

your lassitude overcomes you, wild thing.

I know how to respond; but,

do you know how to af-

firm that you need a demon cleaner?

A ghost ship at full clip

Fighting-as-discipline haunts me with every new face I meet. (Invariably they are black belts, INK’D athletes, ex MMA fighters, etc.)

Cannily uncanny. It may be inspiring my clip this morning. I certainly find the trend personally inspiring. The same way the numbers 93, 13, 11, and 777 hook my attention. Do I see them at every turn because they occur in a disproportionate amount or do my expectations simply enliven significance?

My feet carry my brain to work, propelled as though by the will of something outside of my conscious thought.

I walk too fast. I don’t know why. Mind still foggy from tying one on with the family last night.

Damn. I can barely keep up with my own pace.: I think, walking.

Click, click.

Click, click.

Quick.

Oh well, the energy required to change my momentum seems more consuming than just continuing to walk along, too fast.

It is a grey sky morning.

Have I actually woken up?

°

The sun finally arrives and beats the cloud cover into smashed splinters. It makes the day seem real. I feel my heart finally kick start, keeping rhythm with the coffee coursing through my system.

Howllelujah.: says the newly given up ghost,

in a whisper of surrender to this new day.

Translations for the Deaf.

Douglas Hofstadter wrote about Googel translate not too long ago.

As an American, foreign languages are not the priority of inner city schools, at least not the one I attended. Not, their fault either.

I failed Kiswahili enough times, in college, to blow the socks off of any Kenyan who I meet stateside.

Ninasema Casey.

No one speaks any “Swahili” here. Not enough to even make the general populace know the language is factually called Kiswahili.

Bless you, Bibi Jane. And, bless you end of term oral examiner.

Can I write my responses to your oral questions?: I asked.

No.: she responds.

Shit: I think.

⊙

I’ve worked in enough restaurants to learn functional Spanish and Kiswahili.

(A surprising number of Kenyan immigrants in B’ham, AL. Magic City

We got a Nemo walking in: Robert would call to his kitchen, at Tavern on the Summit, whenever a catch of the day ticket came through. Howlarious.

But fish don’t walk, Robert: I’d always say

[After dinner rush, in the alley, smoking a cig.

Me: I thought “fish” was “samaki” in Kiswahili.

Robert: No, dummy. Nemo, like the movie.

Howlarious.]

)

⊙

I listened to this show, just now.

A few phrases in foreign languages hooked my attention.

I connect to Catalan, Frisian, and Corsican.

Don’t ask why, because I don’t justly know.

I love playing with Translate ever since the Hofstadter article.

But, I don’t have friends like his, to give feedback on the intimacies of Translate’s inadequacies.

On a cru que les données allaient nous libérer: appears in type face on the screen behind the band.

I make haste to Translate.

To triangulate my linguistic location.

If the phrase is in Frisian it translates to: On a cru que les données allaient nous libérer.

It translates to itself.

If the phrase is in either French or Corsican it translates to: it was believed that the data would free us.

In Corsican, the same spellings translate to: where it’s raw than the others were waiting for release again.

Hot and beautiful. Both.

⊙

Désormais ton monde est ainsi fait: appears in type face on the screen behind the band.

I make haste to Translate.

To triangulate my linguistic location.

If the phrase is in Frisian it translates to: this is a ton of things to do.

If the phrase is in French it translates to: now your world is so made.

Howl.

It is like that?

Because we are perceivers, that is why?

There is only causation because we create it?

We created the Why?

⊙

We have an inborn propensity to see causation. We attribute our perceptions to external causes, but some perceptual representations are internal, for instance, optical illusions.

[Consciousness] is an evolved user-illusion, a system of virtual machines.

David C. Dennett. The Evolution of Minds: from bacteria to Bach. 2017

⊙

The voice of knowledge wants to know what everything means, to interpret everything that happens in our lives.

DM Ruiz & DJ Ruiz. 2010, p124 & 13. ISBN 978-1-878424-61-7

I howled last night while dreaming!

Highly excited about this dreaming experience.

Regular readers (thank you!) probably have noticed howl much I dig using [howl] in my writing. I say it in my daily life as well. I bellow it, in silence, at night. (You have to be quiet it the flat where I stay, see.)

I have lucid dreamed since being a young child. I realize I am dreaming quite quickly in the dream state.

Sometimes this realization empowers me to change the dream consciously. Sometimes, I realize I am dreaming but do not realize I may be able to alter the dream state. (But, howl. Why change a new experience for what you assume would be better? The idea does not occur unless I feel real suffering.)

Many times, dreams feel like another plane of reality upon which I have landed, where, the best I can do, upon realizing I am dreaming, is to choose to try to wake myself up.

I am overly familiar with the sensation of sleep paralysis. Of becoming mentally conscious before being able to move my body. It is a weird feeling, but I have never felt the terror others describe when experiencing the sensation. No aliens. No demons. Just a simple inconvenience.

“Oh, howl. I gotta sit here and think, ‘wiggle your big toe. wiggle your big toe,’ ” for what seems like an eternity.

Eventually, my big toe actually wiggles.

Enough context.

Here is the dream.

⊙

I stand at the top of several flights of stairs.

Wooden floors.

An old, antebellum-style home.

Southern gothic.

Crown molding with runners.

There are no lights and

“It was a rainy night.”

A strike of lightning flashes. I see a very, strangely, white child appear on a bench, below. Situated upon the first landing, one flight of stairs, below.

Right before the stairs cut around to the next segment of their spiral.

He looks up, directly at me.

His eyes go wide.

Yawning like mouths.

Too wide.

I do not want to be here. It hurts more than it needs to.

Instead of thinking: wiggle your big toe,

I say, softly,: howl.

I know that I am dreaming. I cannot change the dream.

I want to wake up.

I start bellowing out:

HOOOOOWL.

Lightning strikes again. It illuminates the same bench.

Now, there are ten more children, with yawning eyes, where there had previously been only one.

I howl myself awake.

Serendipitously, “howl” took over and took care of me.

Physicsical Moaning

I smile: I am pleased you like the work, but not particularly interested in why.

You liked how it felt.

Instead, tell me about the last dream you had while sleeping?

Did you like how it made you feel?

⊙

I dreamt a record store called All ‘N Analog. It was no analogue.

And,

What if it turned out that Paul Revere was just a Boy who cried Wolf?

Let’s incorporate.

A stem [becomes]

steAm.
Repetition of action is

not repeating oneself;

though, care must be taken, of course, so you

don’t repeat yourself;

but, sometimes I love it when

you repeat yourself

(or ask me questions, the answers to which you believe you already know.)

⊙

Self-awareness of ignorance can nearly

overcome it.
Just don’t over-commit.

You will, still, scratch that itching nose with a finger, whether you are aware you do so,

or not.

⊙

You skate on a bead of water produced from the ice you melted as the blade of your skate skirted over it.

You have not cut the ice.

Boiling point is dependent upon the local atmospheric pressure, sweet thing.

Are you at an elevation of simple sea level?

The triple point of water.

A bathtub producing water, ice, and steAm from its faucet head.

All states

existing simultaneously; and, at the same time,

the ultraviolet exposure at my atmospheric level, fries, while I watched the sun rise

from my spectacular, secularly sacred space.

Flying in Formation

The dissonance of a consciousness can be caused by a lack of cultural consonance.

A flock of birds makes daily, coordinated flight shows,

training the little birds,

the ones I watched learn to fly over the last week.

The seven others will make tight, sharp barrell rolls,

reversing their momentum and direction.

The three babes miss the sign

and lose their flock.

I see the panic in the way their wings change their flapping.

Pyre-amid Dream

I dreamt I was not quite a teenager.

I fed ducks in a park on a bench, with a Holocaust survivor. He was a mean man, and we got along well.

We did two things:

1. Feed ducks bread crumbs

2. Play a game.

Starting with A, we would name diseases/ailments in alphabetical order all the way to Z(ed).

Alzheimer’s

Bunyons.

Canker sores.

But, repeating was unacceptable.

Ex. Next round:

Acne

Boss eyes

Cataracts.

He always won. I did not care.

He taught me what floaters were but could not tell me why sometimes I saw white ones, like the sprinkles of 4th of July sparklers, and sometimes I saw indigo ones.

He only saw the white ones.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

the crest of your wave foams white in its churning.

My c-heeks go red.

Eyebrows arch up high as your brow furrows.

You slide softly and I run nails over your rib cage.

I kiss your nape.

⊙

But, before that,

in the same dream,

I dreamt that

I went on a walk.

My arm swung by my side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock.

Wafting leaf smoke like incense in some ceremony.

I heard two staccato strikes against strings of an amplified guitar,

in time with my heels’ clicks.